Interesting half/half ERB

I thought this was interesting, and wondered what the ERBers here would think of it: F# B fretted, E A D G fretless, C F fretted:

The FL area has a raised fingerboard to make it the same height as the fret crowns- cool thing. The problem I might imagine is that the fretless "positions" line up with the frets, rather than with the fretted finger positions.

Cool concept, and its purdy, but I couldn't comment on playability. Im sure you could intonate your fretless strings to match the fretted position, but then you might not have proper tuning on your open strings, but Im not versed enough to know for sure. Im imagine it would be more likely to just get used to playing it with proper intonation across all strings and just adjust your positions on the fretless strings.

Its interesting they use different fingerboard woods across the neck, I wonder if this is to produce a rounded tone across all registers, or if it possible makes it sound a little odd tone wise from section to section.

They have some interesting stuff. 7 + 8 strings with low C#, 39" scale "extended" basses, with the dot markers done shifted two positions to make up for a two semitone downtuning, extended string on headstock (think Kubicki or orchestral bass C extensions) and more.

Cool concept, and its purdy, but I couldn't comment on playability. Im sure you could intonate your fretless strings to match the fretted position, but then you might not have proper tuning on your open strings, but Im not versed enough to know for sure. Im imagine it would be more likely to just get used to playing it with proper intonation across all strings and just adjust your positions on the fretless strings.

Its interesting they use different fingerboard woods across the neck, I wonder if this is to produce a rounded tone across all registers, or if it possible makes it sound a little odd tone wise from section to section.

Click to expand...

Looks like they like ebony for low strings and "karin" or something like that for highs. Brubaker also does a "splitboard," using ebony for the bass.

I was going to do a 1/2 fretted/fretless multi-scale 9-string with Browne Basses. After some back and forth, we switched to just fretless, then he kinda stopped building basses. Then I started to , but he might be building again soon...

I was going to do a 1/2 fretted/fretless multi-scale 9-string with Browne Basses. After some back and forth, we switched to just fretless, then he kinda stopped building basses. Then I started to , but he might be building again soon...